Your next favourite team seen up close To escape the chatter around the World Cup we went to the home of Athens Kallithea

Yesterday, as I was returning to Milan and taking a seat in the increasingly uncomfortable low-cost seats, as usual I took my headphones and clicked play, not least so as not to hear an excited schoolchildren who had just finished their class trip and were excitedly returning home. The first song to start playing randomly was 'Gamba di Legno a Parigi' by Francesco De Gregori. Now don't be fooled by the title, the song opens with the lines: 'and then he dreamed of Athens and his mouth wide open', a sign of destiny maybe or maybe not. Well, I don't know if this is what De Gregori meant when he composed this song in 2005, but it was my first impression after seeing the Greek city, with its splendid Acropolis and its impressive architecture that oozes history from every corner and marble sculpture.

As De Gregori sings again in the same song, 'come stare straight into the storm', because even in the bad weather of the near defeat the team remained united, willingly seeking victory in what was its first home game of the season. And so as the Italian songwriter always says in his famous song but in the final bars, "avanti avanti, avanti marsch!", while waiting for their promotion and definitive consecration you now have more than one good reason to start supporting Athens Kallithea. And I, who by now cannot think of anything else, despite the fact that all the students and their professors are still shouting in the plane, monopolising the attention of all the passengers on Monday night's return flight, which takes me from the summery Greek city back to the very cold Milan, I still dream of Athens.